Jay Rock’s Video Shows Him As A Street Fighter Who Plays No Games

Jay Rock’s third album Redemption has been one of Hip-Hop’s most heralded albums of the last month, and his videos are living up to the quality of the tracks they represent. The TDE mainstay MC is keeping that visual train moving with the release of his video for Redemption‘s straightforward Gangsta Rap offering, “ES Tales.”

Directed by Dave Free and Jack Begert, who also laid out the video for the J. Cole-featured “OSOM,” “ES Tales” reveals JR in a pixelated world and opens with him waking up to the sounds of his son playing a 1980s-inspired video game. Subsequently, Jay Rock leaves his house and makes a drive around town and finds that homeless shelters, vehicles, people fighting on the street, and the like all transformed into pixels.

The beat for the song samples Super Mario Bros., so it only makes sense the video has something to do with virtual reality in some way. It’s his realization that his own life isn’t a game that puts this double entendre full circle.

“Look, I’m deep inside the projects where it’s brackin’ at you know the zip,” he raps in the song. “Where we take a quarter piece, flip it ’til the corner lit / A-1 yola, that fresh over the border sh*t / Shootouts and abortions, situations so unfortunate / I knew a ni**a, doing double digits, bust the head wide / For another ni**a, who’s scared to rep his set right / Now in solitary doing push-ups by his bedside / All he want is a green dot, this homie keeping himself fly.”